Weird sales tactic?

ireland381

Looking for some insight...

I went to test drive a car my husband and I are very interested in and have researched a lot online. I loved it and was ready to negotiate; after the test drive the guy asked me the typical "what can we do to get you in this"... the sticker price was $9000, which I know is at least $700 or more over tmv/kbb, so I said "I don't want to pay 9000, I was thinking more like 8000" and he said, "Okay well we'll see what we can do, here's my card, just give me a call when you guys want to come back in"... I was so confused! Is this a weird negotiating tactic? Did he just assume I'd want my husband there too? The other thing was that there was another couple there that he immediately went and helped and they obviously had an appointment, so maybe he didn't have time to talk prices? Which would be very strange... what the heck?

stever

I've shopped about eight different dealers hard this past week (for the first time in 15 years). Only one salesperson came out with "what can I do to sell you a car today". A couple were too new to know much but the other 4 or 5 were really terrific across the board. Easy test drives, no hard sells, no struggling to get a specific price on a specific VIN and no one tried to stop us from leaving the showroom when we were ready to move on.

So, it could be that your salesperson has been trained to be low pressure (a bit too low in your case perhaps), he didn't think you were serious about buying or he simply had a live one with his next appointment and knew he had a better chance with a sale. So you got the ":nice" brush-off. Or maybe we got better consideration because no one else was shopping or maybe it's because we showed up "as a couple".

One test would be to email for a quote on the car your drove. Don't even mention your hubby. The response may tell you whether you need to find another salesperson or perhaps another dealer.

That said, assuming you gave your contact info as part of the test drive, a good salesperson would be calling you to follow up.

bay4side

In over 40 years of buying cars, I have never met a salesman worth dealing with. Once I bought a car at a really great price. The salesman was angry the manager agreed to it. When I picked it up, there was just enough gas to get to the gas station. The keys were on a dirty string and the car was outside. No one showed me the features or anything. The dealerships change very often and the salespeople never seem to stay. Don't try to figure them out. Stick to your guns. They play games and their not your friends.

saratogasteve

what ireland experienced is simply the soft sell. he must of sensed you want the car and is hoping you show you're ready to buy, fill out the forms. Car salesmen push for the test drive to see how much time they can get you to invest in the process and ask questions to assess how ready you are to buy. Statistics show, the more time a buyer spends kicking the tires, the more likely they will buy - and will want to avoid doing it all over again at another dealership. Personally I hate the whole experience - I've even bought cars researched on-line, negotiated on-line and the only thing I needed to do in person is pick the color (before negotiating) and fill out the paper work.